Sebastian bolted upright and Accora felt a surprising stab of fear pierce her old heart.
“He will swim,” Bacchus said, and though the words sounded harmless, Accora knew what he meant.
Darkpool. Gods, no.
“Go,” Baccus told Jude. “Eradicate her allies and bring her to me. I will wait here…and do my part.”
“Yes, my lord,” Jude said. She set three of the Bazira to guard Accora and Sebastian and then scurried out of the chamber through the door that led to the beach on the northwestern quadrant of Isle Calinda.
“The Shadow face,” Bacchus said to Accora, “despite your wasted blasphemy, is not so weak. Cold,” he said. “The Aluren bitch is always cold…”
Bacchus raised his arms and beseeched the Shadow face of the god in a voice that rivaled the thunder of the storm itself.
Immediately, Accora’s breath began to plume before her and she shivered as the air inside the temple turned frigid. A circle of ice formed around Bacchus’s feet and spread outward: a puddle of ice, then a small pond, wider and further until the floor was laid with a sheen of it. Ori shivered and huddled nearer to Accora. The old woman paid her no mind, but watched as the ice formed, climbing up the walls, to the dirt-packed ceiling, forming icicles, like jagged teeth, until the entirety of the room was sheathed in it. Accora knew the entire temple looked as this little chamber now did. The wood creaked and groaned with the weight of it and Accora saw the Bazira men stare fearfully to the ceiling, even as they were awed by Bacchus’s power. Everyone shivered as the cold spared no one its icy bite, but for Bacchus himself who stood, waiting.
“That’s cheating.” Sebastian said through gritted teeth. “But she’ll beat you anyway. She’ll burn up your fucking icehouse and you in it.”
“Watch him,” Bacchus told the three Bazira men, and strode across the chamber, his booted feet cracking the thin layer of ice his magic had wrought. Accora fought the terror that welled up to her throat, choking her with bitter bile.
He took her by the hair and lifted her from the floor. She screamed and gripped his huge hand in both of hers as he dragged her across the icy floor.
Not again! No, not again!
But he took her past the stone slab with its bloodstains of coppery maroon. She met Sebastian’s eye as she was dragged from the room. She expected a victorious grin or triumphant smirk, but the assassin only shook his head in silent commiseration.
The temple’s upper chamber struggled under the ice. Already unsound, the bones and broken planking it was made from creaked under the added weight. The darkpool took up nearly half of the small chamber. Beside it, a figure lay huddled, shuddering. One wing was folded tight against his body.
He will swim, Bacchus had said.
As the priest dumped Accora in the crescent-shaped spill of light—muted and gray from the storm cover—her gaze was riveted to the fetid surface of the darkpool. The waters boiled with stronger fury. The wasted arms of merkind—Accora guessed perhaps three dwelt within—pulled at Ilior and she realized he had hauled himself out and they wanted him back in. His skin was rent with scratches and bites, but he managed to crawl further from the lip of the darkpool, and then curled on the ground again. His side moved up and down with his wheezing breath, and he twitched spasmodically.
“The horror on your face is a mask, mother,” Bacchus told Accora. “You did that.”
“I didn’t…”Accora began and then snapped her mouth shut. She remembered all too well the price of defiance. What Bacchus believed to be the truth, was the truth…or else there was pain.
Pain is his truth.
“He is the second,” Bacchus said. “I caught another dragonman, just three days ago. The darkpool does beautiful things to humans. Brings their darkness forward, where it belongs. To the merkind, it destroys their minds. Useful weapons to me. But to dragonkind…One little drop. One little sip is all it takes.”
“What? No…” Accora thought back to the kafira ritual on Saliz. “I gave them nothing. One sip…”
“Is all it takes.” Bacchus looked to where Ilior huddled, the Vai’Ensai was oblivious to them both. “I hasten his death by making him swim, but you killed him, mother. The Aluren will not be pleased.” Bacchus’s shadow fell over her. “I seem to recall you had great voice five years ago. Do you have it still?”
Accora pushed herself to sitting and smoothed her ragged robes over her knees as if they were in a rich man’s parlor, instead of a temple built of bones where a Vai’Ensai fought for his life not ten spans away.
“Bacchus,” she said. “Do you not also remember the years before? When I cared for you as if you were my own son?” The words were sour and shamed her to utter them.
The offspring of fear and desperation. But I must live to see Selena end him. I must.
“I remember,” he said. “A mother with poisoned teats who would have led me to doubt the Shadow face had you not been so transparent. You deserved the punishment you received. You deserve it now.”
He closed his hands into fists.
“You will mourn me,” Accora said with trembling lips.
“I mourn no one.”
She closed her eyes.
I will not beg. I will not, she promised herself. The first daggers of ice invaded her body and she realized—from some distant place she retreated in her mind—that she couldn’t break her promise if she wanted to.
She couldn’t beg; she only had voice enough to scream.
Bacchus
Zak’reth marched behind her. One hundred men in thick armor and heavy boots should have made enough noise to alert the entire island to their presence. But they made no sound. The steady susurration of rain falling over leaf and soil, and the occasional drum of thunder above them, were the only sounds. The storm had abated, but not ended. Selena could feel it gathering again, ready to mount another siege. She tightened her grip on her borrowed sword and glanced over her shoulder. One hundred pairs of yellow eyes flickered back.
A woman’s scream broke the silence. A scream so full of pain, Selena felt an answering ache in her own chest.
“Ori.”
That meant the Black Storm had followed them to Isle Calinda, or the Bazira had captured them on Isle Saliz. Either way, everyone on board was now Bacchus’s.
“Double-time,” she called over her shoulder, and began to jog. Her strange, silent army jogged after her.